We can Still fix This
by LaptopWriter22
Summary: When someone is left behind, there is always emptiness. The key is not to embrace the despair. Some people are lifted up more easily than others. Some need a kind word, a smile, a touch even when they pull away to remind them that going on is worth the effort. Either way, what everyone needs most in those times is a real friend.


_We can Still fix This: A P and F One-shot_

* * *

It wasn't really the first searing pain, the way the initial news had ripped through his world. The disbelief he felt when his mother took him away from the rest of the family to tell him had faded, replaced by something worse. It wasn't even the way his older sister and his best friend from across the street didn't know how to talk to him. Everyone he knew was tiptoeing around his silence. He could sense they weren't sure how to comfort him.

His stepfamily was grieving, too, but they hadn't known his father all their lives. Perhaps they thought Ferb's pain was worse than theirs. Perhaps they were right. He hadn't said one word since two weeks ago when it had happened. He remembered the last syllable he had uttered, a low, half-unbelieving, _oh_. It had been long enough that the denial was gone, and cold hard reality was hammering on him.

What hurt the most was the fact that his father was never coming back. Lawrence Fletcher had been more than a father to Ferb. He was the last tie to the early years of his life. At thirteen, Ferb barely remembered England before the move to a new, different country with new, strange customs. Sometimes, on school nights in the back of the antique store, his father would tell him stories in between customers.

Lawrence's soft British accent guided Ferb to a peaceful, green countryside. A hardworking, quiet Englishman and his wife, Ingrid had lived there in a little cottage. The couple would get together with both sets of Ferb's grandparents sometimes, though that always ended in harsh words. The families constantly clashed; Lawrence's parents hadn't approved of wild Ingrid with her strange colored hair, and Ingrid's parents were offended. Eventually, over time, his wife left him, but Lawrence always spoke kindly of her to his son.

Ferb had asked Lawrence once if the retellings were disloyal to his loving stepmother. After all, Linda Flynn-Fletcher had accepted him as her son, while Ingrid Fletcher had abandoned him four years after his birth. Lawrence assured him that Linda wanted him to remember his heritage, and said that Ingrid was just confused; wherever she was, she still loved her son. Ferb's memories of his biological mother were supplied mostly by Lawrence. Now, the stories had died along with the storyteller, destined to be stored away in one last child's memory and corroded over time by the faulty human brain.

Also, England was a place that Ferb felt a huge sense of loyalty to. He belonged there, if only by temperament; no one thought his silence strange. His voice wasn't different, and if it weren't for his stepfamily, he would still have preferred England to the states. Now that his father was gone, would he ever get to go back to see his grandparents? After all this, he couldn't lose them, too. America suddenly seemed much too big and noisy, even in the crisp, cold evening. If his father were here, he would have come out and sat with him. Ferb's shoulders bowed, and he dropped his head onto his knees.

It was almost as bad as coming to America not knowing what to expect from a new environment. With his father…gone, he felt alienated from a different culture and a huge part of his family. And then, there was one little nagging fear: Would his stepfamily, would his stepmother, still want him without Lawrence?

Where did he belong, anyway? Ferb felt perfectly lost. He tried to hold the sobs back, but under the tree in the backyard where all the planning, all the joys of a long summer had gone on a few months before, he broke down. He failed to notice that the screen door was open a crack, enough for his sobs to reach the kitchen.

The door slid open a bit more, and a figure hurried to Ferb's side without hesitation or restraint. Phineas plopped down beside his brother and flung his arm around his shoulders. Ferb gulped, but didn't bother to stop crying. This was Phineas, his brother. If he'd reached the point where he couldn't cry in front of Phineas, life wasn't worth living anymore.

Ferb heard his own voice saying huskily, "I need…" The truth was, he didn't know what he needed. He was probably only talking because Phineas wasn't. When Phineas was around and silent, people felt a need to fill that silence.

"Ferb, it's okay," Phineas said. His voice shook suspiciously, and that was when Ferb looked up and saw that Phineas had been crying too. Now, he was twisting his face into a grimace, trying to be strong for his brother.

"I can't go on," Ferb began. Phineas scooted closer. More than one reason for that; he was dressed in jeans and one of those thin t-shirts he liked and those frayed shoes he had worn all last summer, probably because he had rushed outside without stopping to search for a jacket. He had to be freezing.

"Why do you go off alone, Ferb?" Phineas asked. "You ought to know by now. This is awful, but we'll get through it together."

"Easy for you to say." Ferb jerked with surprise at himself. Words didn't usually just fly out of his mouth.

"Don't give me that! I loved him too, you know," Phineas argued. "He was the only father I ever had." Ferb stared down at the dead grass.

"Don't do this," Phineas said in a low tone. Ferb looked up at him. "You're not going to make it better by shutting yourself off from everyone," the redheaded boy insisted. "Come on, Ferb. We can still fix this."

The British boy looked his brother in the eye for the first time that day. That phrase had been a catchphrase of theirs since almost the first day. When they were young and had discovered that they both loved to design and construct anything under the sun, Phineas had said delightedly, 'We can still fix this.' He was talking about their new blended family.

Originally, Ferb had hated the idea of a lifetime with these people. He had no idea how to relate to them. He built a wall with his silence and drove the little boy he shared a room with crazy in several subtle ways. Phineas' cheerful, accepting reaction to his annoyances had shocked him out of the apathy he was trying to project. Then, they realized ways they were alike, and a new thing called brotherhood grew. That little catchphrase wasn't something like 'Carpe Diem' or 'where's Perry', things they said in front of their friends.

'We can still fix this' was whispered, communicated quietly when impossibility towered over them. When the boys were stuck on a desert island with their friends, when one of their inventions knocked shingles off the roof, when another long school year started, all one would have to do was look to the other. It was a special sentence, a secret code phrase.

The amazing thing was that Ferb still believed it. A shudder of relief went through him. Phineas put his hand on Ferb's shoulder, copying the way Ferb used to calm his brother down.

"Mom's been worried about you," Phineas said. "And Candace, and Isabella, and Baljeet-even Buford asked about you."

"He did," Ferb muttered.

"Well, you know Buford. He walked into the house today and said, 'So, I hope Beanpole McGee didn't jump off a cliff, or anything,'" Phineas imitated Buford's voice.

With that, Ferb remembered that he had several friends, good friends that would stand by him. What had he been doing out here alone, on a winter evening, too busy grieving to notice the chill? Slowly, he stood up, giving his brother a slight smile that said, "I can get on all right now." Phineas jumped to his feet.

"Finally," he whispered as his brother finally trudged inside. Phineas followed him, knowing that this was far from over. The grief was still there, the little pieces of their too-often-mended family still glistening on the carpet.

But picking up those pieces could be viewed as another big challenge for two boys who, when they were together, could fix anything.

* * *

**_I had an evening when I decided to write something random for PnF. This is the result._**


End file.
